Translator: Myuu Editor: Myuu
Using the key he had retrieved from the room, Yan Liqiang easily opened the small side door to the warehouse which inspectors specifically used to enter the warehouse.
Although it wasn’t his first time seeing the stockpile in the warehouse, seeing it again still made Yan Liqiang silently gasp in surprise.
It was inside this warehouse that all sorts of extremely expensive leathers and furs were stacked in mountain-high piles. There were bear skins, tiger skins, and leopard skins, all of them heaped in a pile as tall as a mountain. In the midst of the pile, there were quite a few rare beast leathers and furs. Among those, the rarest beast of them all was called the cloud antelope. The cloud antelope pellet was both soft and light — it could even repel snow. A coat made with the pellet of a cloud antelope was thin enough to pass through a ring. It was said that one cloud antelope pellet was worth its weight in gold, and within this warehouse, there were over a hundred cloud antelope pellets heaped in piles.
Apart from the leathers and furs, there were all sorts of medicines and several types of expensive and rare woods.
The Shatu people brought all of these leathers, furs, medicines, and those extremely expensive woods from Mount Qiyun and the Gulang Plains. All of these things were also a big part of the trade between the Shatu people and the outside world.
Each of these items were all stacked in mountain-high piles within the warehouse.
Originally, the entities that the Shatu people partnered with was no one else’s business. However, in the last couple of years, the Shatu people had become more and more overbearing and arrogant in Pingxi City. They prohibited others from doing the same types of businesses that they were doing, especially in the wood trade as well as the leather and fur businesses. Previously, in Pingxi City, apart from the Shatu people, there were some other local shops and traders who were in the wood, leather, and fur business, Yet in the end, they were forced to stop by the Shatu people as they showed up to smash their stores and cause trouble. The local magistrates weren’t able to prosecute the offensive Shatu people due to the Writ of Grace, which basically condoned their actions. Eventually, the only people left in the wood, leather, and fur business in Pingxi City were the Shatu people.
In regards to the medicine business, the Shatu people were unable to monopolize it. This was because the Shatu people didn’t really understand the medical field and there were limitations to the type of medicines that Mount Qiyun and the Gulang Plains could produce as they were unable to completely fulfill the needs and requirements within the city. Besides, this also affected the lives of all the people within Pingxi City. There was quite a large amount of people in the medicinal herb business across the entirety of Pingxi City, and amongst those, there were a few big families and corporations with quite large powerbases who did not fear the Shatu people. After the Shatu people tried their tricks a few times without any fruitful results, they retreated and quieted themselves down.
Yan Liqiang weaved through the warehouse with familiarity, and after just a moment, he arrived in an area behind the warehouse.
Yan Liqiang pushed aside the pile of random objects such as wooden boards and gunny sacks off the floor. Beneath the pile of wooden boards and the like, a metal ring appeared. He pulled the metal ring up and a tunnel entrance heading below appeared before Yan Liqiang’s eyes.
Within Pingxi City, there weren’t many Hua tribe people who knew that the Shatu people had silently dug out a massive underground warehouse below the heaping stockpiles.
In this underground warehouse were piles full of weapons, armor, longswords, spears, bows, and arrows all in rows, piles, and bundles. The warehouse was filled to the brim, and the piles were neatly arranged. It was probably safe to say that the amount was on par with the armory within the Military Governor’s Office. It could probably easily outfit over ten thousand people.
Yan Liqiang randomly picked up a long sword next to himself. Near the hilt of the sword, there was a special branded symbol that you could barely see.
That symbol had been slightly smoothed over by someone, but you were still able to pick out the symbol, which was a ‘Gan’. This meant that this item was made within Weaponsmiths Quarter of Gan Province and was a weapon made for the state. These weapons were originally used to supply the Han Empire’s army stationed within Gan Province. However, for some reason, they had ended up in these Shatu people’s hands and they had quietly been collecting them here.
It wasn’t just this longsword; you could mostly find some traces of marks that had not been fully smoothed over on the other weapons.
Even though he had long known what these items collected here were, looking at them, Yan Liqiang couldn’t help the cold feeling rising within his heart. He also knew what these items represented.
The last time, when the importation of weapons into the city by the Shatu people was exposed, the entire thing faded into nothingness in the end as if it had never been exposed. The people who worked with the Shatu and protected them were definitely not limited to Pingxi Prefecture’s Prefectural Governor, Ye Tiancheng. Rather, they had already involved the military officials within the Great Han Empire’s Gan Province and other important personnel in the court. These personnel were highly ranked and important, but it was clear to see that they had long since been rotten from the inside.
Yan Liqiang weaved through the piles of weapons and in the blink of an eye, he arrived before the bow holder rows which the military longbows were hanging from.
Hundreds of longbows hung on those bow holders, and those longbows were also made for the military by the Weaponsmiths Quarter of Gan Province.
Within those longbows, from one stone all the way up to four stones, the strongest longbow was limited to four stones. To the troops who could use longbows, if they could pull a four stone bow, they would already be considered one of the strongest.
Yan Liqiang picked out a four stone longbow and two full quivers of arrows, slinging them onto his back. He then arrived at the underground warehouse’s back area.
At the very back of that warehouse were hundreds of closely stacked, sealed large pots. Seeing these pots, Yan Liqiang immediately grabbed one in each hand and brought it up to the upper warehouse with great haste.
Yan Liqiang walked to the front of the warehouse and smashed opened the seals on the pots. A strange, strong rosin scent immediately wafted into the air.
What the pot held was pine oil!
This was the most strictly controlled military substance in the Han Empire. In the Han Empire, apart from the military, no ordinary citizens were allowed to use pine oil. This was because pine oil’s only use was to create fires. It could be lit with a match and it was hard to put out. No one except the military could use it. Also, the cost of pine oil was exorbitant. It was hard to make, and all the pine oil refineries were controlled by the military, not to be sold in the market.
Looking at all this pine oil, if you wanted to say that the Shatu people wanted to use the pine oil to barbeque and warm themselves up in winter, who would believe you?
Yan Liqiang for one didn’t believe it.
After opening up the pine oil, Yan Liqiang acted as if he was at a water pouring festival. He poured those two pots of pine oil everywhere in the warehouse: on all the goods and on the floor, he spread it everywhere.
After the two pots were emptied out, it still wasn’t enough. So Yan Liqiang hurriedly ran back down to the underground warehouse and brought up two more pots of pine oil. He resumed by opening them up, spreading and sprinkling it everywhere.
All in all, Yan Liqiang used a full twenty minutes to bring up over thirty pots of pine oil, coating the warehouse above the ground. In the end, he finally went ahead and smashed all the pots of pine oil in the underground warehouse, causing all the pine oil to leak out. He picked up a pine oil pot and as he poured it out, he backed himself out of the underground warehouse, joining the pine oil trails across the two floors.
At this point, the entire warehouse was filled with the smell of pine oil and it was choking enough that not even a mouse could continue on.
Yan Liqiang once again retreated to the warehouse’s side door, He smashed the pine oil pot in his hand and then pulled out the firestarter he carried on his person. Opening up the firestarter, he threw it onto the floor of the warehouse. In an instant, the flame flickered and ignited the floor. Within just a few seconds, that flicker had already traveled tens of meters like a row of dominos, igniting the entire floor of the warehouse…
Looking at the burning warehouse floor, Yan Liqiang turned and rushed to the yard’s side wall. Like an owl, within a blink of an eye, he flipped over the wall and disappeared into the darkness.
Yan Liqiang sped through the alleyways and within just two minutes, he was already far away from that warehouse, over a kilometer out. He turned his head to look in the direction of the warehouse, seeing red reflecting up into the sky. It had completely gone up in flames.
Before him was a big residence and there were a few leafy citrus trees with heavy foliage on the street side not far from it. Like a monkey, he climbed onto one citrus tree branch and hid himself.
Finally, just a moment later, the light of that fire which reached towards the sky could be seen by the entirety of Pingxi City. The entire Shatu community also started to make a ruckus. The long awaited and intense sound of the gongs started to sound in the silence of the night…
